When Donald Trump took office for a second time in 2024, becoming only the second US president to serve two non-consecutive terms (the first was Grover Cleveland), he came into office with a new vice president, former Senator JD Vance from Ohio. Trump’s decision to switch his vice president from Mike Pence for his first term to Vance for his second marked the first time a candidate for reelection switched running mates since Gerald Ford replaced Nelson Rockefeller with Robert Dole in 1976.

JD Vance was born on August 2, 1984, in Middletown, Ohio, as James David Bowman. His parents divorced when he was a young child, and when his mother remarried, his stepfather adopted him and changed his name to James David Hamel. Vance changed his name again in 2013 to honor his maternal grandparents who helped raise him.

Vance had a chaotic childhood with his mother marrying several times and suffering from poverty and drug addiction. Raised in Middletown, Ohio, he often went to Jackson, Kentucky, to live with his grandparents and extended family. Vance graduated from Middletown High School in 2003 and then enlisted in the US Marines. He served in the Iraq War as a military journalist. He left the marines after four years and enrolled at The Ohio State University, majoring in political science and philosophy. He graduated in 2009 and went to Yale Law School. At law school, Vance met Usha Chilukuri, an Indian American, and they married in 2014, a year after graduating. In 2019, Vance converted to Catholicism (although his wife, raised as a Hindu, did not join him). The couple has three children.

After law school, Vance worked for a law firm and then a venture capital firm co-founded by billionaire tech mogul, Peter Thiel, who became an important donor to Vance’s political campaigns. In 2016, Vance published his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which described his childhood and the issues facing poor whites in rural America. It was a best seller, and it seemed to provide some explanations for Donald Trump’s attraction to rural, white voters. Hillbilly Elegy was made into a movie in 2020. The book catapulted Vance into the public sphere, where he became a sort-of spokesperson for rural, white Americans.

When Donald Trump ran for president, Vance did not initially support him, describing himself as a “Never Trumper.” However, by the time Vance ran in the Republican primary race for the US Senate seat from Ohio, he had changed his position and sought Trump’s endorsement, which the former president gave in April 2022. Vance won the election and took office as a US Senator from Ohio in 2023.

When former President Trump launched his reelection campaign in 2022, his sons encouraged him to consider the senator as his running mate. Trump had fallen out with his previous vice president, Mike Pence, when Pence refused to stop the certification of the election results in 2020 in which Joe Biden defeated Trump.

Trump asked Vance to join the Republican presidential ticket in July 2024, before the Republican National Convention. In his speech at the convention when he accepted the Republican nomination as vice president, Vance praised Trump and talked about his childhood in Kentucky and Ohio. He also focused on the idea of America and his hopes to revitalize the US economy to serve working-class citizens.

Vance was effective on the campaign trail, amplifying the Trump positions of restricting immigration, reducing taxes, opposing abortion, and following the "American First" agenda. He gained media attention for referring to Democratic women as “childless cat ladies,” claiming that they were anti-family. He participated in a televised debate with Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota who was running for vice president on the Democratic ticket and was praised for his performance. Some opponents criticized Vance for changing many of his political positions to be in line with Trump’s views.

The Trump-Vance ticket defeated the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota in both the Electoral College, 312 to 226, and the popular vote, 49.9 percent to 48.4 percent. Vance was inaugurated with President Trump on January 20, 2025.